>TIM O'BRIEN
>> ...
>> Even in the abstract, I get angry at the stunning, almost cartoonish
>> narcissism of American policy on this issue. I get angrier yet at
>> the narcissism of an American public that embraces and breathes life
>> into the policy -- so arrogant, so ignorant, so self-righteous, so
>> wanting in the most fundamental qualities of sympathy and fairness
>> and mutuality. Some of this I express aloud to Mr. Duong, who nods
>> without comment. We finish off our beers. Neither of us can find
>> much to say....
>
>I think Mr. O'Brien misreads much of the POW/MIA cult. While
>Mr. O'Brien has a sort of upper-class point of view, finding
>it dashedly unfair that Americans make such a fuss about
>their own losses in the detritus of a country they trashed,
>the kind of people who fly those ugly black flags (1) didn't,
>as a class, concoct the War in Vietnam -- the best and the
>brightest did that -- and (2) have a pervasive and well-
>founded belief that they were lied to about the war. After
>all, Nixon and Kissinger were in charge of the winding-up of
>the war, and would not have been overscrupulous about leaving
>the bodies, living or dead, of lower-class Americans in Vietnam
>if it suited their convenience. As a POW/MIA activist asked
>me in a newsgroup several years ago when I ventured to doubt
>some of his contentions, "Who are you going to believe --
>Nixon and Kissinger or ordinary American citizens?" I had to
>concede where the probability of fraudelence lay, and repented
>my previous obtuseness.
>
>What we have is not the narcissism of the upper classes but
>the justified fear and grief of those they rule and exploit,
>the beginning of a consciousness which the Left could expand
>were not so many of its constituents so strongly oriented
>towards the bourgeoisie and their values. But everything is
>as it is, and so the mute bones continue to be sifted for
>everything that was lost. I respect that refusal to _play_
>_the_game_, and I think it's too bad that no can speak to it.
What is true, though, is that the POW/MIA issue had been exploited by the U.S. ruling class & governing elite to impose & maintain economic _sanctions_ on Vietnam _until very recently_, adding insult to injury so to speak. Never mind _reparations_ for Vietnam!
The POW/MIA issue has become a medium of rewriting the history of the Vietnam War, portraying Vietnam as _victimizer_ & the USA as _victim_. Working-class Americans have been asked to target their grief & anger not against the U.S. government but against the Vietnamese. They are still lied to about the war. They remain grist for the ideological mill that manufactures consent, as long as they think that it's appropriate to coerce the Vietnamese (& others) into _serving_ American & only American needs.
Yoshie